The Three Musketeers

Book synopsis: The Three Musketeers is one of the most celebrated historical romances ever written. It tells of the hot headed young Gascon, d’Artagnan, and his three companions Athos, Porthos and Aramis. In their gallant defence of the Queen of France, Anne of Austria, they put their wits and their swords against the machinations and men of that archetypal eminence grise, Cardinal Richelieu, as he schemes to hold on to his political influence over King Louis XIII. Their swashbuckling adventures take them from the high fashion of the French Court to the murkier aspects of espionage on either side of the Channel in a thrilling story of seventeenth century international intrigue.

The drama! The theater! The excitement! That’s what The Three Musketeers is primarily about. Alexander Dumas’ debutante novel with its calm and its utter zeal, is a real page turner.

A hefty 600-pages novel, The Three Musketeers is big and plush but sinfully comfortable. It’s one of those books which could make you nostalgic when you’re done reading, nostalgic about the times of the French when horses were the only vehicles, when men were still chivalrous and when women were wasp-waisted.

Easily one of the best French classics, the quotes that Dumas’ offers in this book are numerous!

I do not cling to life sufficiently to fear death

Athos liked every one to exercise his own free-will. He never gave his advice before it was demanded and even then it must be demanded twice. “In general, people only ask for advice,” he said “that they may not follow it or if they should follow it that they may have somebody to blame for having given it”.

All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face.

Oh how I’d love to keep quoting Dumas forever! That’s the effect of him right there!

Finally, The Three Musketeers winds up saying that everything that matters — love, courage, pleasure and, especially, all-for-one-and-one-for-all friendship — exists most vividly not in the supposed centers of power, but elsewhere: in the margins of history, where the musketeers, immortally, live.